look of a soldier. No doubt he thought the same of her.
‘Provost,’ she said uncertainly, ‘we have a problem.’
To his credit he did not correct her by saying ‘You have a problem.’ Instead he nodded. ‘This is no good.’
She blinked at him, waiting.
‘We have a treaty with the autochthons – the swamp people,’ he explained. ‘This . . . we should not fight here.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘But what can we do?’
‘Surrender,’ he told her flatly. ‘You have no hope here.’
She forced herself to keep a brave face. She could not let him know that she knew he was right. ‘Provost, you do not have so many men that your victory is certain, and at any rate we would not go quietly. You must know that.’ She put all of her birth and privilege into her tone. She spoke to him as Alice used to speak to tradesmen and labourers: with all that haughty disdain, that assured arrogance.
‘I know,’ he said, quietly, and she deciphered his expression as one of resigned melancholy. He was a soldier with a difficult job, but a job which would have to be done. Her own face must surely have borne that expression more than once.
‘I don’t know what you’re hoping for, Sergeant, but we have you here,’ he went on. ‘We cannot let you go now. And I understand you cannot surrender. God knows I would not, in your place. And we neither of us can fight here. It is a puzzle. I’m sorry.’
His free hand twitched, and she was sure that he had been about to touch her, a little gesture of sympathy, comrade to comrade. In that moment, she and he had more in common with each other than they did with their own men: two people in the same position, with the same problem. And she looked at him and thought, This cannot be a Denlander. This little, worried man in his drab clothes, how can I fear this?
And Sergeant Demaine’s voice came to haunt her, telling her how anyone – a woman, a cripple – could pull a trigger. Little men won wars these days. Giants were simply bigger targets.
And still the problem lay between them. She took a chance and glanced back at her soldiers, all still ready to die for her. She had got this far, she had met the enemy face to face, and still there was no way out. Irresistible force, unmovable object. For all their common ground, they remained irrevocably divided.
‘I’ve never spoken with a Denlander before,’ she confessed, because she had no solution at all. And what did the gentle-born Emily Marshwic do with an awkward silence but fill it with small talk?
He shrugged. ‘We are as you, Sergeant. We have two arms, two legs. We are babies first, then children, then we grow up, and learn about adult games like war.’
She stared at him, and her mouth twitched. Something rose up inside her, from long ago and far away, that made her shake.
The provost stared at her, seeming actually concerned. ‘What?’ he demanded, but it was all she could do not to laugh at the thought that had come to her.
‘Sergeant . . . ?’
She gestured him to silence, almost dropping her musket. ‘Provost,’ she said slowly, for fear of giggling. ‘When you were children, you played child’s games?’
His blank look showed he had not followed her, but she pressed on nonetheless.
‘Did you ever play . . .’ and out in a rush, or she would never manage it, ‘. . . hide and seek?’
The blank look dragged on until she was sure he did not understand her, but then he allowed her a single brittle nod.
Mad, mad, this is so completely mad. ‘Would you allow us a count of one hundred and fifty, Provost?’
‘A count of . . . ?’
‘And we will leave this place and go back into the swamp, where we will not have great stones to hide behind. And we will do our best, of course, to escape, and you will pursue us, as before. And when the fight comes, if we do not run far or fast enough, then at least it will not take place here. There will be no diplomatic incident with the indigenes, the . . . whatever you called them.’
‘Autochthons,’ he supplied, and then, ‘A count of one hundred fifty?’
‘A hundred and fifty would be fair, would it not?’ And, seeing him waver, ‘Or just one hundred, if you insist.’